You are here

Chinese Innovation Acceleration

Submitted by David on Wed, 2018-02-14 12:25

One of the core thesis of BTCH is that there are five stages of an Empire: the first of which is characterised by “copy and assimilate” as a rising system seeks to gain best practice knowledge to accelerate its growth. For many years China was known as just that, a nation that copied others. Indeed it has taken this “copy and assimilate” stage to new levels with its systemised, government sponsored intelligence operations designed to extract every piece of IP for advanced technology from every nation in the world, specifically America.

The second stage of Empire is “ascension to empire”: when having adopted best practices a system starts to take those elements and ‘out-innovate’ its competitors in every field, particularly in military techniques and technology. For China, this too is now coming to pass with China having developed ship killing ballistic missile to negate US carrier power. China has also beaten the western powers in testing an electromagnetic rail gun at sea. Although they will still have to put it into production! Chinese military advances are mirrored by their strides in infrastructure where a 600km/hr magnetic train is planned for construction.

Rails guns are revolutionary new weapons that could change the shape of warfare at sea, and later on land. To date, the speed of expansion of a chemical explosion has limited gun projectile speeds. Without this limitation, electromagnetic rail guns are able to accelerate projectiles to speeds multiples of chemical gun velocities. The result is greater kinetic energy with enhanced speed and destructive power.

The fact that the Chinese are ahead, or even at parity to the US, in rail gun technology is a major wake-up call. Chinese innovation will be a major factor as America tries to keep ahead of the growing Chinese military challenge.